Their Wedding Journey by William Dean Howells
page 22 of 234 (09%)
page 22 of 234 (09%)
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created at the same hour in Boston. A little farther on the steeple of
Trinity rose high into the scorching sunlight, while below, in the shadow that was darker than it was cool, slumbered the old graves among their flowers. "How still they lie!" mused the happy wife, peering through the iron fence in passing. "Yes, their wedding-journeys are ended, poor things!" said Basil; and through both their minds flashed the wonder if they should ever come to something like that; but it appeared so impossible that they both smiled at the absurdity. "It's too early yet for Leonard," continued Basil; "what a pity the church-yard is locked up. We could spend the time so delightfully in it. But, never mind; let us go down to the Battery,--it 's not a very pleasant place, but it's near, and it's historical, and it's open,--where these drowsy friends of ours used to take the air when they were in the fashion, and had some occasion for the element in its freshness. You can imagine--it's cheap--how they used to see Mr. Burr and Mr. Hamilton down there." All places that fashion has once loved and abandoned are very melancholy; but of all such places, I think the Battery is the most forlorn. Are there some sickly locust-trees there that cast a tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass-plots? I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass-plots, or rather the spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the |
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